McCarthy subpoenaed him before the committee on January 30, 1954. Peress took the Fifth Amendment 20 times when asked about his membership in the Communist Party, his attendance at a Communist training school, and his efforts to recruit military personnel into the party. You would need to be a low grade moron to actually believe this guy should have had a security clearance!Originally Posted by Ironside
Yes, Virginia, there really were Communist spies in the United States during the so-called “McCarthy era.”Originally Posted by Ironside
The 'Dies Committee' AKA, House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) wasn't Mccarthy, and was founded as you indicate in 1938 to deal with the "un-American activities of Nazis, Fascists, Communists and White Russians." Now you may consider it a witch-hunt but IMO the Nazi's constituted a real threat which events in Germany would seem to vindicate. The activities of the German-American Bund were cause for concern to the American government.
The Fascists in Italy, and elsewhere also needed to be dealt with as well. Mosley's group in Britain for example was a standing joke but then Hitler had been a joke as well, but by 1938 no one was laughing anymore!
The Communist overthrow of Kerensky's democratic government in Russia had been followed by the troubles with Reds in the US just after the First World War. Leon Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution within Marxism wasn't exactly a comforting image. The Comintern (Communist International) at this time believed in the idea of a world-wide revolutionary movement and they were intent on exporting revolution. The argument has often been that the being Communist Party of the 1930s opposed social and political injustice, and had no Stalinist agenda. There was in fact more than enough evidence to prove the reality of Soviet Communist spying to any objective person.
John Reed who represented the US Communist groups was friends with Lydia Stahl who was later arrested in France as a Russian spy. So the idea that Communists had little to do with Soviet espionage is patently false. They have been part and parcel from the beginning.
From the beginning Soviet leaders understood the necessity of underground activities, and foreign governments and labour movements were the key target for infiltration. The evidence for this from many diverse countries is overwhelming. Communists in government engaged in espionage and acted to influence policy in a pro-Soviet direction. Many of the individuals engaged in these activities were Communist Party members, or affiliated with it.
What was the situation that the US was facing in the late 1940's and 50's? Was the "Red Scare" real?
To put the whole thing in context consider what had come before;
Bela Kun and the "Red Terror" in Hungary 1919, Soviet encouragement of British and American worker’s strikes, and the Spanish Civil War of 1936. The Failed Putsch in Hamburg staged by German Communists in 1923, the Spartakist League revolt in Berlin and Ernst Toller's Soviet Republic in Bavaria. Many of these same Communists would later join the rising National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), AKA 'the Nazi's'.
The murderous Purges of Stalin, the Soviet blockade of Berlin, formation of the Cominform, the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950, and finally the Communist inspired North Korean invasion of South Korea. Later Chinese Communists would cross the Yalu in support of this invasion.
Lastly, most of Eastern Europe was conquered by the armies of the USSR and incorporated in its ‘sphere of influence’ in the post-war carve-up of central Europe. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Albania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia had all fallen to the Soviets with no signs they would ever be free nations. Then, in 1947-8, these were transformed from the top down into more or less close replicas of Stalin’s Russia.
Reason for concern? I think so!
The Comintern parties continued to heap praise on Stalin’s brutal, savage dictatorship with always an explanation for every new brutality close at hand. The Comintern had become simply an instrument of the Soviet Union, pure and simple.
The various Communist parties were a conduit and a cover for the activities of many of the Soviet Union. To suggest that the international Communist parties had nothing to do with these events is revisionist history of the worst sort. The Comintern was being used as a tool of Soviet foreign policy.
The White House was aware of accusations against a substantial number of U.S. government employees, including such high officials as the State Department's Alger Hiss, White House aide Lauchlin Currie, OSS executive assistant Duncan Lee, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White. They were afraid of a public scandal that might discredit the Democratic Party and its policies and help their political Republican rivals. The 'Amerasia' case and the inactivity regarding Harry Dexter White are examples of this. After being told of his activities White was nominated in 1946, as American representative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Venona Project was the name given to the U. S. government top-secret program launched in 1943 to intercept and decipher communications between Moscow and its intelligence stations in the West. The National Security Agency (NSA) in 1995 began releasing the Venona documents to the public, and fewer than 3,000 partially or fully decrypted Venona messages have been declassified. This is only a tiny fraction of the over 200,000 intercepted messages. No evidence obtained from these intercepts were ever introduced in any court, or released to congress for security reasons. The evidence shows that most of those individuals accused of aiding the Soviets in the 1940s had actually done so. They also showed that Soviet spies had infiltrated every major agency of the U.S. government during the war years, from the State and Treasury departments to the Manhattan Project including the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The opening of some of the Soviet archives show conclusively that that the American Communist Party was tied in with the Soviet government, and engaged in extensive espionage against the United States. The American Communist movement assisted Soviet intelligence and placed loyalty to the Soviet Union ahead of loyalty to the United States and the Russian archives show exactly that.
Some of those ridiculing Mccarthy for his idea of Soviet spies in the government were actually Soviet agents. The journalist I. F. Stone for example was in the pay of the Soviet Union. Michael Straight, editor of the liberal journal, The New Republic later confessed to working for Soviet intelligence.
KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky revealed, and the Venona transcripts have confirmed that Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's close wartime White House adviser was also a Soviet agent.
Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland unambiguously cleared all of the individuals cited by McCarthy and branded his charges as "a fraud and a hoax” perpetrated on the American people despite the fact that ex-Communist Louis Budenz had testified at the Tydings Committee hearings that Lattimore was a Communist. Lattimore defended Stalin's show trials and referred to the Soviet Union as a democracy, during the Nazi-Soviet Pact he said there was little to choose between Great Britain and Nazi Germany, in 1949 he said he wanted "to let South Korea fall—but not to let it look as though we pushed it."
John Stewart Service, a career diplomat stationed in China during World War II, was caught transmitting classified documents to the editor of the pro-Communist journal, Amerasia.
McCarthy was entirely correct in wanting to remove such individuals from forging American policy.
To call this a witch-hunt suggests that it was looking for what didn't exist and that is clearly not the case. The "McCarthyite purges" and the witch-hunts he inspired removed from positions of influence a large number of individuals who were NOT loyal to the United States, though it missed as many as it found. Some individuals were not guilty of anything except being foolish enough to believe the Communist Party was something other than a Soviet tool. McCarthy and others like him effectively destroyed the Communist Party as an instrument of espionage. There was a real danger to American democracy, and McCarthy was one of many who helped to preserve it. His infringement of civil liberties such as freedom of speech and freedom of association were real, but mild in comparison to the threat.
McCarthy IMO went too far in some cases, but we smear him for using the same tactics that others of the day used, and for the same tactics that are still being used today by Democrats and Republicans. I just do not see a case for him being one of the Great American Villains of the 20th century.
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